HP’s decision to shut down its PC operations and sell off TouchPads in a $99 fire sale has left many gadget lovers scrambling to grab one. At that price the tablet is clearly a bargain, but long-term its prospects as a webOS device are limited as support will dry up.

With that in mind there is already an effort underway to get Android running on the device, with Qualcomm already having a version working on HP’s tablet. But if you aren’t a fan of Android there is an alternative: Ubuntu Linux will also run on the TouchPad, and you can make the switch right now if you are so inclined.

There is good news and bad news if you decide to follow the tutorial on how to do this over at Liliputing. The good news is it installs alongside webOS rather than replacing it therefore allowing you to choose which operating system to boot in a dual-boot setup.

The bad news is, it’s quite a complicated install procedure so you need to follow the instructions carefully. It involves three stages of installing Preware, creating and mounting an extfs partition, and then finally installing Ubuntu 11.04 Chroot.

Once Ubuntu is installed you will require some knowledge of the OS as all you are left with is the command line version. From there you can start to install software using the apt-get command, with one of the first packages you’ll want to grab being a graphical frontend like LXDE. Here’s proof that it’s possible to get the Chrome browser running on the TouchPad using this method:

One final thing to note: the TouchPad uses an ARM processor, so not everything you may be used to using on a typical x86 Ubuntu install will work. Some apps you will have to find alternatives for or do without.

Reader Comments

Anonymous

and you actually got paid for copy/pasting what is already out there?

Liam Lah

This chroot crap us barely worth mentioning, I’ve been able to do this on my nexus one for about a year now. It’s really not that great. To have it running natively would be something worth blogging about.

http://twitter.com/Pakistanimation John Chimpo

YEAH! This is completely ridiculous that it is not 1,000X easier and better than everything else! $99 Outraaaaaage!

Kevin

A chroot isn’t the same as a dual-boot as the article says. You run X11 apps inside webos. I wish it was a dual-boot though.